From record sleeves to 200 people: how Thomas Kurppa’s role has changed — The Brand Identity – Home of the Greatest in Graphic & Brand Design
Thomas Kurppa’s focus has shifted from making the work himself to creating the conditions for it at an agency with more than 200 people. He and Måns Hosk pitched together for a major client and won, then started Kurppa Hosk in 2009 on the back of a job they had no agency to deliver. The Stockholm-based brand agency now works from five cities. Kurppa came into design sideways – he ran a record label with a few other DJs in the early 1990s and taught himself Photoshop and Illustrator to make its flyers, posters and record sleeves. In this interview, he talks to us about how his role changed as the agency grew, what he has had to protect, what producing music taught him about when to stop and what he would still like to get better at.
TBI Hi Thomas! How is the summer treating you over in Stockholm?
TK Very well, thank you. Stockholm in summer is hard to beat. The long days completely change the rhythm of the city. It’s been a good mix of slowing down, spending time by the water, and returning to work with a bit more energy and perspective.
TBI You taught yourself Photoshop and Illustrator to make the flyers, posters and record sleeves for your record label. How did a design career end up outweighing one in music?
TK I’m not sure design ever really outweighed music. After all, music was what pulled me into design in the first place. I started a record label with a few other DJs, and taught myself Photoshop and Illustrator because we needed flyers, posters and record sleeves, and there was no one else to make them.
Over time, I realised that I was probably better at design than I was at making music. I found my voice more naturally there, and design opened up a much broader world of possibilities. At some point, I noticed I was spending more time thinking about the sleeve than the record, and that was when the balance really shifted.
TBI What did producing music teach you that’s been useful in design?
TK Music taught me a lot about rhythm, structure and contrast. One small shift can completely change the character of something. Moving one element, removing a layer, or introducing silence can have as much impact as adding something new, and the same is true in design.
It also made me acutely aware of how ideas move through pop culture. Both music and design absorb what is happening around them, then sample it, reinterpret it, and give it a new expression. You need to understand the references people already carry, but also know when to disrupt them.
Music taught me to work intuitively and through iteration. You rarely land on the right expression immediately; you build, listen, adjust and sometimes strip everything back again. Perhaps most importantly, producing music taught me when to stop. Both music and design can easily be overworked, and knowing when something is enough is a crucial part of the craft.
TBI How did you and Måns Hosk come together to start Kurppa Hosk in 2009?
TK Kurppa Hosk started almost by accident. Måns and I had worked together in the late 1990s and become good friends, but by 2009 we were each working independently. We decided to pitch together for a major client and, rather unexpectedly, we won. At that point, we didn’t even have an agency yet.
We had always complemented each other well: shared values and ambitions, but brought very different skills and perspectives to the work. That first win made us realise that combination could be powerful, and that with a bit of momentum, we had the foundations for something successful. That is how Kurppa Hosk came to life.
TBI A team of more than 200 people, becoming part of Eidra and acquiring other agencies is far from the typical path of a designer-founder. How has the growth and scale changed your role?
TK The role has changed enormously. In the early days, I was involved in almost every detail of every project. As we grew, my focus gradually shifted from creating the work myself to creating the conditions for great work to happen across the agency.
Growing without compromising quality has always depended on attracting the right people, and that hasn’t changed since the beginning. In principle, there’s no real difference between building a team of 10 exceptional people and one of 220; the standard has to stay the same. What changes is the rigour and precision required in recruitment, especially when bringing whole new teams into the organisation. You have to protect the culture and creative standards while giving new people room to contribute and shape what comes next.
Scale also allows us to bring much more expertise in-house. Today, specialists across strategy, motion design, 3D, typography and many other disciplines can work closely together under one roof. That proximity creates space for prototyping and experimentation. We can test ideas earlier, move more freely between disciplines and discover possibilities a more linear or fragmented process would miss.
Becoming part of Eidra has expanded that context even further. Our clients rarely come to us with one neatly defined problem – they are usually navigating interconnected challenges across brand, business, technology and organisation. Bringing those capabilities together allows us to understand the bigger picture and create solutions none of us could deliver alone.
That said, I still need to stay close to the work. The challenge is providing clarity without controlling everything, and protecting what makes us distinctive without preventing it from evolving.
People need to feel trusted enough to take creative risks.
TBI What have you had to protect as the agency has grown?
TK The most important thing to protect has been the belief that the work always comes first. Growth can easily create distance between the people making decisions, the people doing the work and the clients we are doing it for. We have tried to remain close, direct and deeply involved.
We have also had to protect our curiosity and our willingness to challenge the expected answer. Organisations naturally develop more processes as they grow, but process cannot be allowed to replace judgement, experimentation or a strong point of view.
Finally, we have worked hard to preserve a culture where the best idea matters more than seniority or title. People need to feel trusted enough to take creative risks, honest enough to challenge one another, and ambitious enough to keep raising the bar. Easy to say with 10 people, much harder to sustain with more than 200.
TBI What did joining Eidra change about how you and your team work?
TK At an operational level, very little has changed. We still work the same way, and joining Eidra has not altered our approach to quality or how we run our creative process.
The biggest shift is that we can now pull expertise from other Eidra companies directly into our projects. Instead of simply handing work from one company to another, we can bring specialists into the core team when the problem calls for it.
That felt unfamiliar at first; we had to learn how to combine different perspectives and working styles without losing clarity or momentum. It is something we have grown to value enormously. New expertise brings fresh insights into the work, but it also develops our own people by exposing them to different disciplines, questions and ways of seeing a problem.
Typography has always been central to how we think and work.
TBI The agency has a type foundry, KH Type. Why start your own?
TK We realised that we had built up a remarkable concentration of typographic expertise within Kurppa Hosk, and that it deserved a more deliberate structure.
We develop plenty of custom typefaces for clients, but between those projects there are always independent ideas and explorations that deserve a life of their own. KH Type gives us a platform to develop those ideas into retail typefaces and make them available beyond our client work.
Perhaps most of all, we started it because we could. Typography has always been central to how we think and work, so it felt completely natural for Kurppa Hosk to have a small foundry of its own.
TBI What part of running an agency for well over a decade has been the most challenging?
TK I am naturally very restless and often have the feeling that nothing is happening, even when a great deal is. Måns is similar; neither of us is especially comfortable sitting still and presiding over something static. Growing and evolving has always felt inevitable to us, and we have consistently wanted to push Kurppa Hosk as far as it can go.
The challenge has been doing that in considered stages, pushing the limits of what is possible without overreaching, while never compromising on quality or culture.
Kurppa Hosk has a very distinctive culture, and we value it hugely, as ultimately, the work has to be driven by passion. For us, design is not simply a profession; it’s tied to how we see and engage with the world. As much as the company grows or changes, that sense of curiosity, love and genuine commitment to the work has to remain at the core.
TBI Has AI changed what clients are coming to you for?
TK Not fundamentally. Both Kurppa Hosk and our clients are very curious about AI, and it is already helping us accelerate certain parts of the process. It can support research, expand exploration and allow us to test more possibilities in less time.
But our clients still come to us for the same reasons: quality, judgement and a distinct point of view. Taste and judgement still come from individuals. A tool can generate options, but it can’t determine which idea is meaningful, appropriate or worth pursuing.
We use AI deliberately, and we never let what technology makes possible replace our own ambition or standards. We are obsessed with quality, so we are open to any tool that helps us raise the bar. The tool may change, but our responsibility for the outcome does not.
TBI What can you still get better at?
TK Perhaps recognising when something is actually going well. We are very good at identifying what is missing, what could be sharper and where we need to go next. That dissatisfaction is useful because it keeps the work moving forward, but it can also make you overlook what has already been achieved.
So one thing I would like us to become better at is pausing long enough to understand why something worked, and allowing ourselves to enjoy it before immediately moving on to the next challenge. Not becoming complacent, just becoming more conscious of progress.